


"Roots" | MCU Spider-Man Lyrical Character Study

by DemigodOfAgni



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Awesome Karen Page, BAMF Peter Parker, Blood loss and bullets, Character Study, Flashbacks, Foggy Nelson Is a Good Bro, Gen, Hurt Peter Parker, I'm not kidding, Lyrical Fic, Non-Linear Narrative, Not Really Character Death, On the Run, One Shot, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker Whump, Protective Matt Murdock, Too Many Metaphors, Winter Time, because sometimes you're too young to be grown up and sometimes you're too grown up to be young, chase scenes, it's just implied that they're dead, it's kinda dark and gritty, serious self-deprecation, some blood, theoretical Spider-Man: Homecoming 3, this is crap i see myself thinking it's absolutely horrible, weight of the world on your shoulders kind of thing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-18 17:35:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28996083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DemigodOfAgni/pseuds/DemigodOfAgni
Summary: "I know it's gotta go like this, I know,"Hell will always come before you grow."Trouble found me..."Trouble found me."— Imagine Dragons,'Roots'Peter Parker. Spider-Man.Two opposites of a coin, yet tied together by the thread of Fate. Peter had accepted the hardships that came with the job of being a teenaged vigilante superhero. Had accepted the responsibility to keep the two parts of his life as far away from each other as possible. Had accepted the fact that not everything always goes to plan.Maybe he should have seen the possibility of Peter Parker's face plastered with Spider-Man's name across every single billboard in the city happening a lot sooner than expected.I'm poor as hell, my wallets are empty, therefore I have no ownership of the characters who belong to Marvel Studios; I only own the plot.[can also be found on Wattpad under the same username]
Relationships: Matt Murdock & Peter Parker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	1. The Youth

## MCU Spider-Man Lyrical Character Study

_**Song: "Roots", Imagine Dragons** _

#  _CHAPTER 1 | THE YOUTH ****_

* * *

##  **DON'T THROW STONES AT ME.**

Words whispered in the air, quiet and frigid like the winter frost that crept along the ground with its emaciated fingers. Peter couldn't remember the last time he had felt this cold; a kind of coldness that hacked at his bones and clung to his skin like a sheet of ice. His jacket was worn thin from continuous use, doing no better to shield him from the bitter winds.

Around him, people pretended to not notice how he slouched as he walked, the way his entire figure curled in on itself as if the bag clinging to his shoulders was as heavy as the world. The hood over his matted hair, now greasy with slack curls, did nothing to alleviate concern. Peter didn't have the energy in himself to fix his image. He supposed he didn't have the energy to fix anything these past few days.

Muscle memory was the only thing that kept Peter on track, kept him from slipping and falling onto the icy ground of the New York streets, that and the constant hum of his Spider-Sense, his Peter-Tingle that had been twisted and shoved through the wringer these past few weeks, aching and burning as it watched the world spiral away from Peter's fingertips, away from his control.

His Spider-Sense was light, whispering things like the wind was, spilling secrets and uncovering lies and decorating truths. His Spider-Sense whispered, but Peter couldn't hear it, he couldn't hear it and instead heard only the desperate words of the song some distant part of his soul was singing.

##  **DON'T TELL ANYBODY**

—sang this part of Peter's soul, long and desolate.

Peter wanted to tell it how useless that request was now.

There was warmth on his left, pulling Peter towards it like there was a wire coiled around his heart. Without ever looking up, Peter deftly avoided the twisting aisles of people as he steered himself underneath the thin shade the low building provided. The subway rumbled past as if the Earth had suddenly groaned, and the flyers taped to the windows by the store's doors fluttered in the breeze. A rather popular green flyer had the elaborate headpiece of Mysterio scrawled over it, pointing at Peter with a hand that didn't seem real but was all the same.

 _I believe!_ Mysterio taunted.

Peter pushed himself into the store.

A blast of warm air sent tingles across Peter's body, the ice in his bones quickly melting into unease. His head still held low, Peter eyed the customers who waited by the windows and the small tables of Delmar's Deli and Grill. The customers looked away.

Peter fiddled with the small pile of change that was nestled in the side pocket of his bag as he stepped up to the counter, drawing back a few coins and notes before he slid them onto the countertop. The ginger cat, Murph, glanced at him, mewling expectantly as he waited for a friendly scratch.

Murph curled himself away on the counter when Peter made no move to greet him.

Peter glanced past the faces that shuffled back and forth. The kitchen beyond the counter was loud, exuberant. The counter remained silent.

'I—' Peter coughed into his shoulder, trying to stifle the sound, his Spider-Sense bristling at the action in fear; he hadn't talked for the whole day, and his voice sounded cracked and dry. Peter tried again, gripping the wad of money tighter in his hand: 'I...Um, number five, if you mind.'

Silence. And, then, a hand, calloused from days without rest, pressed itself over Peter's. The touch of warm flesh on his cold skin made Peter want to recoil, to run and flee and scream to the darkened sky.

##  **TROUBLE FINDS ME.**

A hand pushed back the hood obscuring half of his vision, and Delmar peered into Peter's face. The man looked like he had aged a lifetime, but that didn't make sense; Peter had seen him only a month and a half ago, right before he had left for that trip to Europe.

'Number five,' Delmar said quietly, his eyes crinkling with something that looked sorrowful, pitiful, 'with pickles and pressed flat?'

Peter stared at him. 'If you mind,' Peter found himself saying.

Delmar shouted something to the workers behind him, and the world had reduced to fuzzy forms and dull colours in Peter's eyes. His ears perked at the sound of the radio, blaring lazily from beside him, drums echoing like thunder but quick and sharp like lightning.

Delmar was pushing the money back.

Aghast, Peter gaped at him, whispering, 'Mr. Delmar, what are you doing?'

People were whispering again. The store's door opened again, and the cold leeched in, curling around Peter's legs like hungry snakes.

'It's on the house,' Delmar murmured. He pushed the money back into Peter's hand and tried to shove it away from the counter, but Peter's hand was plastered to the smooth surface, unwilling to move. 'Come on, niño, _on the house_. It's for free, no charge.'

'But I...I...' Words died on Peter's tongue, his Spider-Sense mumbling incoherently again. '...I can't.'

How could he just take something so freely? After all the trouble he had caused, how could he just accept something that meant so much to others than it did to him?

_A blast of violet. Flames turned the air to ash, cutting across the street as precise as a scalpel made of fire. The taste of gold and lightning and charred paper and singed hair._

_Peter had hugged Murph close to him, shielding the mass of squirming fur from the heat, and Delmar had looked at him with unbridled fear._

Delmar gripped Peter's hand tightly. 'Anything for a friend,' the man told him softly.

The music jolted. People fell silent. Peter withdrew his hand and knocked his wrists behind his back as he stared at the money, as his Spider-Sense flicked out like a knife, shouting with a vengeful wail, ****

##  **ALL THE NOISE OF THIS—**

Swiftly, effortlessly, in practiced ease, Peter's senses flashed outwards as his wrists were drawn together behind his back. A strip of metal curled over his skin, pulling them tight. A pair of handcuffs snapped over his wrists.

The whole process was quick, and Peter noted the sudden stillness inside the store as if everyone had frozen to stone. A quick look at Delmar's mortified expression was enough to confirm simmering suspicions.

Peter gently, experimentally, tugged his wrists forwards. A pair of hands just as gently held them back.

'Son,' said the man behind him, 'I'm afraid you're going to have to come with me.'

The handcuffs were tight, unrelenting, like snakes of metal had coiled around Peter's wrists. He could break them, easily as one could snap a pencil, but something about being held by the police officer who had slipped them on in the first place ignited a primal sort of fear.

Of being hunted. Of being caught.

##  **—HAS MADE ME LOSE MY BELIEF.**

Peter glanced at the reflection of the mirrors hanging behind Delmar on silver racks, small handheld mirrors that showcased the events unfolding behind Peter behind him like miniature bubble universes, all running through the same timeline at the same moment.

_'I'm sorry, you're saying there's a multiverse? 'Cause I thought that was just theoretical. That completely changes how we understand8 the initial singularity. We're talking about an eternal inflation system, and how does that even work with all the quantum—? It's insane—'_

_Peter had turned, only to find the eyes of every person in the room had turned dull._

_His excitement shrivelled to dust._

The radio again switched songs, belting out staccato piano notes that ricocheted through the air like bullets. Each chord was a sledgehammer to Peter's senses, and he found himself murmuring to the reflection in the mirrors, 'Sir, I've done nothing wrong.'

Captain Stacy's grip only tightened around Peter's hands as the officer pulled him back from the counter. Peter reorientated himself on his feet quickly from the sudden movement as Stacy whispered into his ear, 'Son, I may be the only person who sees you as a threat to the public _and_ as a child. Please, let's make this a lot easier for us and the people around us, Spider-Man.'

Peter sucked in a breath.

##  **I'M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

He forcefully shoved back against Stacy, knocking the police captain backwards as Peter lunged for the door, money spilling onto the ground like copper stars and fluttering comets. With a quick flick, he snapped the handcuffs in two, the links of the minute chains bursting into silver glitter.

The whispers erupted into the air.

The whispers followed him out of the store  
as he crashed through the door.

The whispers surrounded him as Peter froze.

Frost inched up his spine and down his limbs, turning him into an ice sculpture as Peter eyed the many police officers lined up outside Delmar's store. The police cruisers' lights glared like the sun under the darkened sky, flashes of scarlet and azure burning the backs of Peter's eyelids.

An officer shouted, 'Raise your hands, get on the ground!' as the rest of his squad raised their guns, all trained on him.

Peter fought the urge to comply, fought the urge to sink to the ground and lie there and hope for all his problems to melt away into the cold. Peter fought the hissing and spitting of his Spider-Sense as he waited. His fingers curled, tapping at the phantom sensation of his web shooters clasped around his wrists, his prized contraptions now smashed to pieces to avoid any evidence of his supposed European massacre. Instead, all he received were the jangling of cuffs still clipped around his wrists.

##  **ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOOR.**

'On the ground!' the officer yelled again, his gun quivering in his grip. 'On your knees!'

'I didn't do anything!' Peter ground out, but he raised his hands. For what, he didn't know; to show that he wasn't armed? To show that he didn't have his web shooters to make a quick getaway?

People were gathering, now. Slowing their paces, slinking out of buildings, holding up their phones. Peter's face would be broadcast to every media outlet and social media platform in minutes, and a lifetime ago it would have felt like a sin to know his civilian identity was being so blatantly thrown about. Now, he just didn't know what to think anymore.

'Peter Parker, Spider-Man, you have been charged with voluntary manslaughter of international civilians and the murder of Mysterio,' the officer said, as if he had memorised a script. 'These are serious offences piled up against you, and that isn't including the complaints of disorderly conduct over the past few years.'

'That – wasn't – me,' Peter growled through clenched teeth, Spider-Sense shrieking. 'If you would just _listen to me—'_

A gun went off. Two resounding _BANGs_. Peter deftly dodged one bullet, letting it sail past his head, when the other swiftly drilled into Peter's shoulder. Blood washed the ground with thick spatters of red, sparkling rubies glinting up at him from where they laid on the ground, and suddenly Peter's body wasn't his own.

He was running, his feet and legs being driven by a force Peter could only dream to name. People yelped and swerved away from Peter as he poured all of his strength into his legs, blood thundering in his ears and spilling all over the pavement.

Behind him, the sounds of shouting officers echoed through the street, the snarling of engines rumbling through the ground as police cruisers started up and as the sirens wailed like grieving widows, flooding the world with red and blue.

Panting, Peter had loosened his grip on his senses, letting his Spider-Sense navigate the world for him, guide him through the city that had once been his home but had now set every eye and ear onto him and twisted every piece of information about him into a picture that no longer looked like Peter.

Peter Parker, quiet and timid and science-enthused Peter, was buried beneath the crimes that had been plastered over Spider-Man's red and blue uniform, turning the red on his ledger an ugly shade of scarlet.

The bellows of his Spider-Sense and the sound of a vehicle registered in his brain too late, and Peter skidded to a stop on the road in time for a car to barrel into him. Weightlessness and gravity grappled with him as Peter went flying. Dust and frost clogged his throat.

##  **ANOTHER HIGH, ANOTHER LOW.**

And Peter coughed up sand.

The world was fuzzy, its edges burning white and gold while everything else was shrouded in shadow. Air sizzled in Peter's lungs, and he hurriedly reached up to tear his mask off. The material was scratchy against his hot and sticky skin, sweat dripping down his face in rivulets in contrast to the hot and dry surface of his parched throat.

Peter's balance slipped sideways, his Spider-Sense blown wide open like the jaws of a screaming animal as he tried to make sense of the world around him. Heat assaulted him on all sides, grit and sand grating at his bones and sparking pain along his nerves. There were boxes, so many metal crates and chests all lying haphazardly around, retaining and expelling heat and smoke in waves. Red liquid dribbled and bubbled beneath him, reflecting the inferno blazing around him in its ruby-encrusted depths.

Beyond the flames that hungrily licked at the boxes and at the hems of his suit, Peter could see structures glittering along the horizon, little towers reaching for the sky as lights blinked along their edges. Coney Island.

##  **ROCK BOTTOM—**

Peter glanced over to his left, where he knew the ocean would be, writhing and churning beneath the darkened sky. He imagined it, the sound of the waves crashing against the sand, but all Peter could hear was the crackling of flames, the creaking of his own bones and the howling of vengeful machinery piloted by a vengeful man.

He barely had time to duck before the Vulture roughly rose from the swirls of smoke and kicked Peter in the chest, his taloned footgear shoving Peter back into the sand before the wingsuit crashed into the burning wreckage. Pain flared in Peter's ribs, the ringing in his ears pulsing in tandem alongside his beating heart and burning Spider-Sense.

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM—**

'Hey, _Pedro_ ,' taunted Toomes. His mechanical wings spread like the cloak hanging off Death's shoulders, the warped metal feathers glinting like bloodied knives in the firelight, weeping wave after wave of sputtering blue sparks.

Peter's Spider-Sense could only do so much to help pull him out of immediate harm while being bombarded with stimuli at every angle. The flames were voracious, the metal shards were merciless, and Toomes was relentless. It was a dance over scorching sand as Peter ducked and weaved between the Vulture's strikes, but every movement was like slamming into a wall, losing all momentum until Peter was nothing but a dead weight, until all he could do was hit—

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM.**

Peter straightened his left wrist, firing a web from his clunky web-shooting contraption; its pair that had once been clipped to his right hand had disappeared while the Stark Industries plane was still flying, Toomes having been quick to trap Peter's hand in one of the engines to deter him.

Toomes swooped up into the sky, swerving out of Peter's webbing's reach, his wings batting a huge gust of dry air at Peter. Spider-Sense blaring, Peter could barely reorientate himself when the weight of a full-grown man and his twenty-five-kilogram metallic harness slammed into him from above, flattening him to the ground and shoving every last breath out from Peter's lungs.

Toomes' foot crushed itself against Peter's sternum, the twin mechanised talons attached to his boot snapping downward and sinking into Peter's chest. Peter couldn't stop himself from crying out when he felt serrated metal grate against his collarbones.

##  **I'M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

His cry was cut short from an abrupt punch to his face. Blood boiled, fire roared, Toomes raged as angry and as relentless as the scavenger he had modelled himself after. Scavenging, hunting. Toomes was always hunting hunting hunting.

As Peter's head snapped to the side with every blow against his skull, he dimly wondered, why did they fight? Why were they fighting on a wasteland that couldn't have been mistaken for the burning surface of hell? Peter and the Vulture had existed on two different worlds; what had happened to bring their lives together in such a violent way?

Growling, blood bubbling at the back of his throat, Peter listened to the crying of his Spider-Sense and flashed his fist upwards, blocking the punch Toomes was about to use that would have snapped his nose clean off. The Vulture reacted quickly, wings spreading and engines rumbling as he launched into the sky, bringing Peter with him by digging his mechanical talons deeper into Peter's flesh.

Up in the air, that was the Vulture's territory. A spider wouldn't do well without anything to cling to.

##  **ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOOR.**

As Peter fought to pry the talons out of his chest, he figured Toomes wasn't a man who charged blindly. He had a goal, and Peter wasn't an idiot to dismiss what it could be: to provide for his family. It was a noble cause, sure, but he crossed a line the moment things began to close in around him. _Helping_ did not compensate for _crime._

The talons snapped under Peter's grip. Metal slid from his chest with a sickening _slutch_ and Peter found himself free-falling. His Spider-Sense was the equivalent of a tightly strung violin, shrieking head-splitting notes as Peter shot out a web. It latched onto Toomes' chest plate, and Peter yanked himself upward, twirling around so that his feet smacked against the Vulture's head.

The Vulture grabbed Peter's arm and grappled with him. The wing suit whined, the metal feathers scraping across anything and everything as Toomes violently kicked Peter away. He was too slow to stop himself from slamming into the sand again. He was too slow to roll out of the way when he felt talons dig into his back, shoving him further into the boiling ground.

 _God,_ Peter wondered to the ringing in his mind, _why am I even fighting?_

Air in his lungs. His chest felt oddly numb and warped. Then his face was submerged in the sand.

##  **ANOTHER HIGH—**

_What am I supposed to do now?_ Peter continued.

##  **—ANOTHER LOW.**

_Man, I screwed up big-time, huh?_ he thought idly.

##  **ROCK BOTTOM—**

_Mr. Stark would be so mad now,_ Peter concluded.  
_Couldn't even save his stuff from the plane._

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM—**

_And now he's going to have wipe my bloody corpse off the sand._

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM.**

_I wonder how long that's going to take._

_What a failure you are, Parker._

And then Peter's back, scratched raw, felt heat wash over it, and he collapsed into the sand again face-first. His muscles were tense and shuddered in the light of the flames, and he could feel air ripple around him. Weakly, he rolled himself onto his back. Peter gazed up the Vulture hovering over him, an angel of death armed with wings of obsidian.

By the time Peter had avoided being impaled through the head by a shard of the warped feathers on the Vulture's wings, he figured his thoughts were melting in the fire.

As he was lifted into the air, inspected like carrion, Peter realised none of this was about impressing the one and only Tony Stark. None of this was about proving himself, about trying to rid himself of his mistakes.

It was about the people. The individuals that made up the complex network of life that sprawled across the place he called home. And if Peter let Toomes fly free, if he let Toomes get his hands on the burning remains of the Avengers' equipment, then he would be profiting off the destruction. Peter would be letting Toomes harness the chaos and despair of the people, of Peter's home.

Muscles screaming, Spider-Sense wailing, Peter yelled a bloody and parched cry at the Vulture, who had swooped down to secure himself a container, the metal twisted with indents and bubbling from the heat.

Peter shouted, but the Vulture paid no attention. Not even when Peter had fired a web with his spasming fingers, not even when the orange flames were joined by sparking blue ones. The only time Toomes looked back was when instead of flaring, his wings snapped.

The Vulture wing suit exploded, and suddenly there were flames that seemed to tower over the tongues of fire all around them, as if this inferno that had sprung was ravenous and hungered for the weak and for the sinners. Maybe both, but Peter couldn't tell because he was running into the fire himself, burning the mistakes that cloaked his form, burning them away until all that was left against his charred body was fire.

##  **I'M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be 3 chapters, I think
> 
> I don't have the time nor the will to make a +20k word fic in one go


	2. The Veteran

## MCU Spider-Man Lyrical Character Study

_**Song: "Roots", Imagine Dragons** _

#  _CHAPTER 2 | THE VETERAN ****_

* * *

His skin burned, but his sight was tinged with black. Groaning, Peter’s fingers twitched as he rolled onto his back; a mistake he later realised when it felt like someone had rubbed his skin raw with sandpaper. His ribs felt tender in a sickeningly familiar way, the pain clawing up his spine and into his head.

_The morning he woke up in a holding cell in the Netherlands, there was only physical agony flitting through his body like jagged knives. Peter had gasped, trying to bite down the cry that had lodged itself in his throat as he discreetly glanced at the bloody mess that was his leg._

_He later broke out of said holding cell when he figured sitting there would do him no good, but every step and every breath was punctuated by a burst of pain that snaked up his leg and his spine, and Peter wondered what he would do if it meant he could collapse to the ground and just rest._

_He never seemed to rest anymore._

Sounds were loud, deafening, making the darkness in his vision increasingly oppressing. Heaving, Peter pried his eyes open.

Pain shot through his arm, almost threatening to send him under again, but Peter ignored it in favour of the grey clouds hanging over his heads, a watercolour painting smeared with shades of neutrality and desperation and despair. The sky was tinted with red and blue, screaming sirens that rumbled towards him.

##  **HAD TO LOSE MY WAY** **—**

His current predicament rushed back into his mind like a flood, and Peter sucked in a large breath with an agonised whine. Red stained the insides of his lungs, forcing him to cough it all back up again. The bullet wound in his shoulder gurgled and bled onto the icy tarmac, but the vibrancy of fresh blood had dulled into the ugly maroon of dead crystalline tissue. Peter’s clothes were crusty and stiff, lined with metallic rubies, crackling like ice as he tried to crawl onto his feet.  
Pain ran rampant, humming so loud it almost blocked out the horrified words of the driver of the car that had rammed into him. The driver was hysterical, gripping Peter’s arms and shouting, ‘Oh God, kid?! Are you alright?! Come on, kid, please don’t die on me, it was an accident, I swear—’

‘Hey, man…’ Peter managed to croak out. He weakly reached out, grasping the driver’s arm. He smeared red over the guy’s sleeve like paint. ‘Hey, I…I’m fine, fine…’

‘No, you’re not,’ the driver replied heatedly in worry, his accent warping his voice slightly. ‘You’re not, I hit you with my car, this is going to be the second time I’ve killed someone with my _car_ —’

‘I’m alright,’ Peter insisted, squirming out of the driver’s grip. His wounded arm protested, but he continued, nonetheless. ‘I’m alright, just…I gotta go—’

‘You’re _bleeding_ , man— wait, hold on—’

Suddenly, Peter’s face was harshly pulled to the side, a hand gripping his chin tilting his head up towards the sky as if that was supposed to make the mucky details on his face any clearer. The driver, an Indian man with swathes of dark curls, looked at him with horror.

‘Holy—’ the driver cursed. ‘You’re that kid. Peter Parker. You’re _Spider-Man_.’

##  **—** **TO KNOW WHICH ROAD TO TAKE.**

There was a tightness in his chest, like someone had tied Peter’s ribs together with wire. His Spider-Sense was rumbling again, wary and tired but still alert; like a magnet, it pointed towards the police cruisers whining in the distance, coming closer and closer and closer.

Resigned and tired, Peter tore himself from the driver’s grasp. Scrambling to his feet, he righted himself and glared in the direction the police would be driving from. Dimly, he wondered just how long he had passed out; no more than minute or two, probably. He was still ahead, Peter could still get ahead.

The driver was getting to his feet, too, but by that time Peter had already taken off, peeling down the road, his Spider-Sense still prickling with sensitivity as the driver yelled at him to come back. All thought burned away, and Peter was just running running running.

That was all he seemed to be doing these days.

Peter had only managed to speed past three blocks when it felt like fire was burning at the bottom of his lungs. Blood splattered down his clothes and onto the ground and the wind whistled in his ears, creating a mural of hurt and fear along the pavement. He had only managed to run so far when he was blocked off.

A barricade. A freaking _barricade_.

Grabbing a nearby pole to steady himself, Peter yanked himself to a stop as he eyed the slew of police cruisers blocking the roads and pathways. Their red and blue lights glared furiously, a wall of light that almost pushed Peter back. It left him wondering just how long he had passed out; maybe he had just run to the danger rather than from it.

_‘If you even cared, you’d actually be here.’_

_Peter’s mouth went dry as soon as the Iron Man suit drew back like clockwork in front of him, pieces unravelling like a puzzle given life, and Tony Stark stepped out with the elegance of a dragon whose maw was dripping with liquid fire._

_‘I did listen, kid,’ Mr. Stark growled. ‘Everyone else said I was crazy to recruit a fourteen-year-old kid.’_

_Peter had tried to correct his age, anger and frustration being the only things possessing his body when Mr. Stark snapped at him. Behind them both, a ferry groaned as it fell apart, all the trust between its supports failing, suffering, drawing away._

_‘What if someone had died tonight?’ demanded Mr. Stark, his voice loud and booming and oh so truthful because there was nothing but disappointment coating every inch of the man’s posture, his face, his voice. ‘Different story, right? ‘Cause that’s on_ you.’

From the corners of his vision, Peter could see the police officers flitting about like insects, twitching and quick. Some were shouting at civilians to back away, others were shouting at themselves, others were shouting at Peter. One of them brandished a box instead of a gun, a speaker or a boom box of some kind, letting it drop onto the hood of one of the cruisers with a loud _CLANG._

Peter’s senses bristled like the feathers on a bird.

##  **TROUBLE FOUND ME**

—muttered his senses.

Words that were being shouted to him were a garbled mess that disappeared the moment someone flicked a switch on the side of the box.

Then the entire universe collapsed into a single scream and tore Peter’s braincells apart.

Peter’s own cry was drowned in the sound that violently clawed through the air like a dragon, beams of high frequency sounds that went unheard by civilians and officers but tore through every one of Peter’s highly-strung senses. It felt like his brain was melting, like someone had shoved him into a forge and every resounding _BANG_ of the hammer slamming against the anvil echoed like an army, like every nightmare condensed into one single word and that word was _pain_.

He was on the ground now, whining alongside the scream, keeling keeling _keeling_ like the coward he was, his joints clicking and creaking and groaning as Peter tried to wrap his senses around the utter _noise_ around him, tried to bundle it up and place it behind him.

He couldn’t. He just...couldn’t.

He couldn’t hear the shrill tones of his Spider-Sense cry out—

##  **ALL I LOOK FOR WAS—**

—as it tried to warn him of something slamming into him, expanding and pushing him backwards and onto his back as he was knocked to the ground. Pain splintered up his body, spidering along his skin as he was tangled in the rough mesh of the weighted net, his arms and legs locked together as if he were caught in the threads of a hungry spider’s web. For a terrifying moment, he thought his own body had frozen to stone.

Peter tried to determine whether having him bound up would give the authorities an easier job of lugging him to jail, because he was sure he would try to tear himself through anything and everything if it meant getting that horrible _wail_ out of his mind.

Trying to breathe through the din of his mind, Peter squirmed in the net, trying to pry it off with twitching and uncooperative fingers that had frozen in the cold. He couldn’t feel the coarseness of the net grazing his numb fingers, but he could sense the police officers edging toward him, like they were trying to cage a wild animal.

All they could see was a wild animal. One that operated above the law, one that had taunted and hurt and apparently even _killed_.

##  **—WASHED AWAY BY A WAVE.**

Dread nestled with the confusion and pain in Peter’s head, the shadows of the authorities drowning out the last of the dull light of the grey and apathetic sky. Dread churned in his stomach as he could only vacantly watch the officers reach out toward him.

Dread leapt up into his throat when he was suddenly yanked into darkness.

A scream nearly tore through his vocal cords as his limp body was dragged away from the police at lightning speed, someone roughly pulling him into a nearby alley. The hollow wailing in Peter’s head finally shut off, and Peter sighed in relief when the officers shouted at him, at whoever was dragging him through the muck of the alleyway and out of sight.

Roughly, Peter’s twitching body was shoved into a pile of garbage bags. Spluttering, head aching, Peter absently watched a figure in red dash in front of him with another garbage bag in hand. Peter dimly wondered whether his blood had soaked the clothes of whoever this was.

The figure vanished, quickly climbing up the fire escapes bolted to the brick walls lining the sides of the alley, his movements loud and slow and sloppy as he tried to balance the garbage bag in his arms, the metal screeching under his weight. Why would he cause so much noise? It was almost as if—

##  **I’M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

—he was trying to draw attention.

The sounds of police officers thundering into the alley filled Peter’s senses.

Subconsciously, the net still twisted around him, Peter sunk further into the garbage as they burst into the alleyway, yelling at one other, pointing towards the figure in red who had climbed over the fire escapes and vaulted over the building’s roof. He disappeared, an officer yelling into his radio, ‘He’s running along the roofs! He’s got Spider-Man! We need a clear visual!’

Peter watched as the authorities turned sharply and hurried back the way they came from. Someone splashed in a puddle, and Peter’s Spider-Sense just had the energy to turn his head to the side, allowing liquified garbage to splatter the side of his face, trickling down his hair and into his ear.

He didn’t dare make a sound. He didn’t dare breathe.

When he heard the revving of engines and the squealing of tires as police cruisers sped down the road, when the last of the glaring scarlet and indigo lights had faded to mere wisps of jaded memories, Peter finally relaxed. He almost didn’t care that he was smothered in rot and waste; in was a relief compared to being hounded by the police anyway.

Exhaustion clawed at his quivering muscles, and he shivered in the cold. Peter could feel his eyelids grow heavy as he fell limp against the constraints of the net around him. Pain hummed in his shoulder, bloody but now it wasn’t so unbearable, it wasn’t so painful—

His Spider-Sense snapped outward. _Knife_ , it whispered.

It wasn’t a whisper of danger. More of an observation, something to note.

Peter barely reacted as someone grabbed a fistful of the net by his head and shredded it hastily with a blade. Cord by cord, the person hacked at the mesh until it fell away in stringy metallic filaments. Peter peered up the person leaning over him, trying to make out features.

There weren’t any. It was the man in red, and his eyes burned scarlet and a pair of horns jutted from his head.

The name was at the tip of Peter’s lethargic tongue, but before he could do anything the man continued his frantic sawing, grumbling, ‘Dear Lord, what have you gotten yourself into?’

_Gotten myself in trouble with the law,_ Peter wanted to say, among other dry remarks, but he couldn’t find the strength in himself to even open his mouth and make a sound. The best he could do, with exhaustion clinging to him like leech made of ice that sapped every drop of energy from his bones, was manage a tired grunt. The man paid no attention to the sound, instead tearing through the last of the net with a final _snap_.

The threads fell away. It felt as if all the strings holding Peter upright all this time withered to ash, and he slumped into the man’s arms. Peter’s eyes slipped shut.

The surprised yelp from the man wasn’t enough to keep him awake any longer. Not even the panicked words made sense to him: ‘No! Parker, you need to stay awake! But— so much blood, so much— Parker!’

But what could Peter do? He was falling, the cavern in his mind yawning wind and empty and dark and quiet, too quiet, like he was floating in space where he could hear nothing, and Peter had lost all grip on himself.

He was falling falling falling—

##  **ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOOR.**

Until Peter landed on the jagged ground, rocks and debris spread out before him like an ocean made of stones and lost dreams. Peter blinked stardust out of his eyes as he crawled to his feet, his breaths wheezing and pained. There was an ache in his chest; a bullet. No, not a bullet, a bolt of energy, mechanical and cold, hot and fizzing and _too close too close to death._

Panicked, Peter ran his fingers over where the pain stemmed from, somewhat relieved but increasingly concerned over the lack of weeping blood and the ripped and steaming hole in the breastplate of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Stealth Suit.

He was somewhat relieved to the point where there was no where to go except downwards.

Peter’s vision spiralled as he watched the mirrors surrounding him like ominous obelisks, watched as the mirrors shattered and warped and wept, the reflections of Peter from within them unfolding outward like origami. They were given life, given flesh, given a single purpose, and that sole purpose was to drag Peter to the ground screaming as they tried to bury him, tried to shove him into a coffin whose gravestone lay waiting to add his name to the long list of others that had come before him.

The reflections, the thoughts raging through Peter’s mind given form, tore at Peter with immaterial fingers that felt like knives scraping along his skin, swarming him like flies to a carcass. And then Peter was shoved to the dirt, the black of the Stealth Suit bleeding off his skin like melting flesh. All that was left underneath were the jaded reds and cobalt blues of Peter’s first costume, dull like the wings of a dying butterfly. All that was left was a kid with broken needles trying to weave his own story.

All that was left was a kid with broken threads trying to stop a god who could twist reality like fabric.

##  **ANOTHER HIGH, ANOTHER LOW.**

High above him, Mysterio glared down at, mauve cape flaring in an unseen but tangible wind. His armour glowed like all the precious metals of the Earth had been melded into a gift from the stars. His gauntlets spilled waves of emerald starlight, taunting and powerful and fake and real.

As he darted about the ruins of marble and stone, the world swam in Peter’s vision; some things shimmered, others smelled sharp and acidic. Peter could hear lies being whispered, being woven right in front of his eyes, and Peter could sense where old threads were picked up by new ones, could sense just what was real and what was not, but his eyes could see and his ears could hear and he could smell and touch and taste and it was everything his mind wished could only be a dream.

Here, there was no reality. It was just noise, a horrible noise that muddled everything and _Peter couldn’t even begin to make sense of it._

##  **ROCK BOTTOM** **—**

He couldn’t make sense of it, he couldn’t and by that time he had already stumbled into a valley of rocks and metal. His foot caught on metal bars and bolts, and Mysterio strode towards him, that gleam of power and mystical energy leaking like syrup to reveal the sympathetic face of Quentin Beck, clad in an armour of grey, gauntlets of tech, armed with drones, and a helmet of code.

Quentin Beck gazed at Peter pitifully, _empathetically_ , and murmured, ‘For what it’s worth, Peter: I really am sorry.’

##  **—** **ROCK BOTTOM—**

The world swung to a stop as if a pendulum had plummeted into nothingness. Peter’s breath was stolen from him, as if Beck’s apology was supposed to mean something. As if it were supposed to ease the clattering of his nerves and the crying of his senses. The world fell silent, and Peter suddenly couldn’t hear anything.

_Sorry for what?_ Peter found himself thinking, found himself wanting to ask. _Sorry for lying? Sorry for tricking everyone I know? Sorry for wanting to help me? Sorry for trying to be my friend?_

The metal bar against his feet seemed to burn. Some distant part of his mind registered what they were, but words appeared as muddled sounds in Peter’s head. He knew something bad was snaking along the ground and into the very core of his being, adding to the chaos in his mind, because how was he supposed to stop something that disappeared beneath his fingers, only for it to come back and sink knives into his body? How was he supposed to stop something that dug every story and truth and detail out of Peter like a grave and set them on display like a mural streaked with blood and grime?

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM.**

_Is this apology worth anything?_ Peter thought.

His Spider-Sense was pulled to its limits, stretched and aching, taut as wire, desperate but quiet and resigned when Germany’s InterCity Express train answered his multitude of questions, slicing through his leg and slamming against his ribs like the whole world had crashed into him. All rational thoughts burned away to raw energy, screaming, _An apology from a horrible man like Beck is better spent than on someone like you._

Someone like Peter. Peter, who refused to tell a lie from a truth and sunk into delusions rather than face the reality of his own life. Peter, who’d rather let someone else shove him into a hole.

The train barrelled into him and he was swept into the air.

##  **I’M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

And then Peter was falling, but this time his leg wasn’t mangled and bloody, but he was still cloaked in red. Sleek and shining and bold red, framed with crisp blacks and lined with silver, as if spider webs traced across his arms and legs.

Peter gasped, trying to draw in breaths against the unrelenting battering of the wind against his face. The shutters of the lenses set into the mask were narrowed, clearing his vision from water and ice as he plummeted towards the churning water below him. In the distance, an Elemental taller than London’s Tower Bridge loomed with a raging storm in its heart and a blazing fire in it eyes and Mysterio as its conductor.

His new suit felt tight against healing cuts and bruises, compressing the swelling and holding Peter together. Swiftly, Peter’s fingers darted upward, tapping at the spider emblem stamped to his sternum. Three taps – _one, two, three_ – and Peter quickly ran himself through the motions. Back straight, toes pointed, arms to the side—

##  **ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOOR.**

The small parachute deployed from the mechanism on his back, the force of the sturdy material dragging Peter back from fatal terminal velocity. Gravity felt like a dream, there but not present either, as Peter continued to streak towards the ground. He counted to ten, and he released the parachute, letting it flutter away in favour of snapping his web-gliders open. The strongest of updrafts sent him soaring towards the epicentre of the chaos, all seventy-five metres of swirling energy and raw destruction.

Glancing at the Elemental had shivers rippling down Peter’s back. It was like staring into the face of the power the made the Earth turn, that made stars explode, that made the groans of black holes so loud and head-splitting. Every one of Peter’s senses were overwhelmed with the sheer complexity of something like this, and Peter couldn’t help but wonder, _What if it is destroying London? What if it is something from another dimension? What if this is all true?_

Peter’s Spider-Sense contemplated his questions. A moment; it passed in a few seconds, Peter covering ground much faster than he would have liked.

Peter’s Spider-Sense contemplated, and all it said was, _You can do something no one else can._

And maybe it was true. It was probably the truest thing he had ever heard in such a long, desolate time. Because he could see, he could hear, and touch and taste and smell, maybe even more so than the average human, and that would have made this all the more believable.

But he could do something no other person could: he could sense.

##  **ANOTHER HIGH—**

Peter could sense lies and truths twisting about themselves like a pit of snakes, an indistinguishable mass of scales both glittering like gems and roiling with poison. With every wave of input his body was bombarded with, Peter could go that extra step further. He had that capability, to sense if those things were truly what they were.   
And Quentin Beck, no matter how genuine he had been those rare moments, was far from the heroic man he portrayed. An actor, a mask he slid on to worm his way into the world of superheroes.

He couldn’t let him win. Peter couldn’t let Beck reap anything from the destruction that had been splattered around the world like blood. He couldn’t let Mysterio win, because all he did was twist truths and lies and pulls the world into his grip with his words; he never gave the world an option to think because he did it for them.

##  **—ANOTHER LOW.**

Peter roared and twisted and leapt and flew, dodging drones that hunted him down mercilessly. It took time, it took his webs and his skills, it took Peter’s energy, but here he was, now. Here he was standing, battered and burned and bruised, in the very hallway Beck was blinking disbelievingly at him. Here he was, holding a pretender of the throne with the strength of the returned king.

Here he was, bringing his fist back and driving it into the clear dome around Beck’s head. It shattered like a scream, shattered like the tinted glass that made up Peter’s precarious reality. Pieces clattered to the ground, dreams disappearing in a tintinnabulation of twinkles and whispers.

##  **ROCK BOTTOM—**

Peter’s life in these recent months had been torn apart and fixed back together hastily; he had pretending himself, pretending he was okay, that he was fine. But he had barely given himself any time to heal, to come to terms with things on his own will.

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM—**

Mysterio grinned at him with a bloody smile, shoving Peter into a final, desperate illusion. If Peter let Mysterio slot needles in wounds that were supposed to close on their own, then there was no sense of individuality left in Peter, and it made him dependent on a figure, someone he had mistakenly given the privilege to take advantage of his life.

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM.**

Peter was done with people saying he wasn’t capable of the things he was meant to do.  
The illusion sputtered out like a flame drowning in its own puddle of molten wax. Drones, sparking and groaning, crumpled beneath Peter’s fingers. Smoke hung thick in the air like a curtain, and in it – Peter ripped off his mask, coughing blood – he could see Beck in the corner, shoved into a crevice a man only like him could fit in.

‘You lied to me,’ Peter found himself murmuring. ‘I trusted you.’

Beck only stared. The hole in his chest steamed and bubbled. How ironic, that the bolt of energy that wounded him came from the same drone used on Peter. ‘I know,’ said Beck, his voice strangely put together, calm. ‘That’s the most…disappointing part.’

_Click_. Something echoed to Peter’s right, but his eyes were drawn to Beck on the ground as he held up a pair of glasses. The E.D.I.T.H. glasses, the source of this mess.

‘Stark was right,’ Beck managed from the ground, holding the glasses out. ‘You do deserve them.’

_Click_.

His Spider-Sense jerked. Peter’s mind was vacant from his body as his arm flashed out, curling around an object aimed at his head, so close that the metal could have brushed his hair.

Peter glanced sideways, glanced through refracted light and the shouts of his Spider-Sense. He peered at the silhouette of the real Beck at his side, standing rigidly as the gun sat steady in quivering, bloody fingers. Peter found his reflection staring back at him from within Beck’s drifting pale eyes, tinged with madness and grim satisfaction.

#  _B_

#  _A_

##  **I’M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

#  _N_

#  _G_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I literally kept falling asleep post this


	3. The Lionheart

## MCU Spider-Man Lyrical Character Study

_**Song: "Roots", Imagine Dragons** _

#  _CHAPTER 3 | THE LIONHEART **  
** _

* * *

Peter found himself slamming between realities, his entire life folding in on itself and compressed into milliseconds as he faded in and out of fragments of his memories. His mind crinkled like glass and glittered like stars, and amongst the glimmering he couldn't find anything to latch onto. It was all quicksand, broken and slipper. It was all facets, it was all shards, pieces having shattered into jagged shapes with no hope of being put back together.

It felt as if he was being wrung out dry, like someone had torn a hole open and memories and emotions and fears and dreams spilled out of Peter in an endless, viscous mess. They dripped between his fingers and onto the ground, like he was trying to catch the rain in his hands.

Like he was trying to catch the rain in his hands.

##  **I KNOW IT'S GOTTA GO LIKE THIS, I KNOW.**

Peter looked up at the sky, dark and boiling and black, the storm churning in a sea of clouds, rain slipping between his fingers. The wind was cold and harsh, unforgiving as it wrapped Peter in an empty embrace. His fourteenth birthday had passed only a couple of weeks ago, his gifts being the bag that was slung over his back, and an irradiated spider bite. Inside the bag was the suit he had made overnight, and his broken phone in which he tried to film stunts as Spider-Man that evening.

It was supposed to be a hobby. Just a side-gig, like work. Just something to cash in a few extra dollars as Peter tried to lessen the strain May and Ben had as they tried to keep themselves afloat.

But then some guy, all full of himself, crushed his phone to splinters and walked off like he hadn't just ruined Peter's chances on trying to become a reliable and independent person.

The world crawled along as relentless and as inevitable as the rise and fall of the sun, not caring for what the quiet voices had to say. No one seemed to care for the quiet voices, certainly not Peter.

And that one night, he wished he could scream.

He wished he could scream at the sky for creating a downpour that drowned all sound around him. He wished he could scream at the man who had barrelled past him with a gun, sneering at him as he rounded a corner and into the shadows, a man where Peter could have stuck his leg out and sent him tumbling into alleyway muck and sludge if he had wanted. He wished he could scream at the police officer who had yelled for Peter to at least _do_ something.

But what could he do when the world didn't even bother with him?

What was he supposed to do?

And that one night, he wished he could scream when he trudged back to his apartment in Queens and found a slew of police cruisers surrounding it with their red and blue lights glaring and glaring and _glaring_ and Peter squeezed past the barricade and past the officers and ran up the stairs and his senses which had all been bundled up tightly all came unravelling like strings and suddenly Peter could see and hear and feel more things than he was supposed to and then he found the door to his apartment open.

Open. Quiet and bloody, painted with red. The scent of pennies hung thick in the air.

##  **HELL WILL ALWAYS COME BEFORE YOU GROW.**

Inside lay the man Peter had tried so hard to help, the man Peter had loved so much. Dead, like all the other Parkers.

The rest of the night had been a blur, this particular moment in Peter's shredded life playing in fast forward. Details burned like film, warped and waxy and unrecognisable, but Peter could remember the way horror and regret screamed in the silence that followed when Peter had found the murderer to be the man he hadn't tripped up on his way back home.

He was right there, sneering at him with his ugly face.

That was on Peter, wasn't it?

 _'What if someone had died tonight?'_ asked a man, just as wise and just as tired and just as _alone_.

'But someone _has_ died to tonight,'Peter wanted to tell this man, this new man that had slipped into the void made by Peter's own failures, a piece that was rough around the edges but had somehow seamlessly slotted into place.

Airway constricting with emotion, Peter knelt beside Ben's quiet body, silent and drenched with red. It was the silence that grated on Peter's nerves, clawed at the inside of his mind and underneath his skin. Peter gingerly laid a hand against the bullet wound in his chest; he couldn't find it in himself to recoil from the touch of sticky crimson seeping between his fingers, burrowing beneath his fingernails and staining his skin.

'It's my fault,' he murmured to the man standing behind him. 'I let this happen. I could have stopped it, and now...now it's just a...a...'

' _Different story, right?'_ the man asked as he, too, knelt down beside Peter, his question not unkind. Just cold, logical. As if it were fact, carved in stone, written with blood. This new man gazed down at Ben, in sympathy, in sorrow, _something_.

'No,' Peter answered tiredly as he tried to look at the man beside him; his face was shadowed, blurred, a being unattainable despite being right next to him. 'No, not really. It isn't different, it's a cycle. It's all the same. It's always the same.'

The man turned, and suddenly it was Tony Stark peering at him from the bloody and filthy and burning battleground. His skin was both dark and pale, Lichtenberg figures crawling up the side of his face as he eased himself onto the ground, the Infinity Stones embedded into his hand blinking with an omnipotent curiosity.

Gasping, Peter stumbled to the ground, the webbing that had kept him swinging through the roiling air snapping into dust as he tried to dash Tony, tried to dash toward the man who had gone limp against rubble and rebar and now the Iron Spider armour retracted and hot air billowed into his face as Peter skidded to the ground and suddenly there were tears.

'Mr. Stark?' Peter croaked quietly to him.

There were tears, and Peter couldn't remember the last time he had cried.

'I'm sorry, Tony,' Peter whispered, bowing his head as he tried to cradle Tony in his arms, tried to hold onto him as if it were supposed to stop him from slipping away.

(Everything Peter touched slipped away, everything everything _everything.)_

'I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, it shouldn't— you shouldn't have to be like this, it should have been me, I should have put on the Gauntlet...no...it should have been _me..._ '

Peter and Tony locked eyes, emotion flickering between them. And then Tony's eyes, its dark depths filled with a wisdom and a happy life lived, glazed over, and the blue glow that had kept the fingers of tenebrosity at bay winked once, Tony's arc reactor flickering out like the last of the sun's light had drowned in an ocean of primordial and eternal darkness.

 _'... 'cause that's on you,'_ Tony rasped quietly in the darkness.

##  **TROUBLE FOUND ME.**

Peter couldn't help but curl up inside the numbness the darkness brought with it.

##  **TROUBLE FOUND ME.**

It was quiet.

Peter had never been in a place where it was this quiet. The kind of quiet that was empty, stretching beyond loneliness, stretching beyond the maws of black holes, as if every single atom and particle had been sucked out and all that was left was Peter and the quiet.

 _Well,_ Peter thought, the words in his mind as loud as a foghorn, _not just the quiet. There's also the misery, and some of the despair._

There was too much of the misery, too much of the despair. Peter could feel waves of dead emotions and coldness drift away from him like radioactive decay, felt those sluggish emotions slip away in chunks like large sheets of ice torn away from the tops of glaciers.

Peter shivered, his awareness limited to only this...sphere of resentment and guilt. He dimly wondered, was there anything beyond this? Was this all that was left of Peter Parker? A husk, filled with the ghosts of emotions and abstract feelings and concepts left untouched? Everything in his life amounting to this...nothingness?

##  **I KNOW IT'S GOTTA GO LIKE THIS, I KNOW.**

Didn't anything he do matter?

Did all the good Peter had accumulated these past years equate to the looming emptiness in his heart? In his mind, his soul? Was it _ever_ enough? Will it _ever_ be? Will the debt that had been growing deep inside ever be paid back, ever be returned?

(What could he do when the world didn't even bother with him?)

Would anything Peter do be able stop that horrible cycle of fault and failure and ruin? Would there be anything to stop the gravity from drawing Peter down into the depths of something cosmically empty, stop him from drowning in everything that ever was, ever has, ever will be?

Was the void Peter was stuck in be all that he will ever know?

The void filled with regret and guilt, with death and pain, and pain pain _pain._

There was pain lining every inch of him, coating the back of his throat like syrup and filling his lungs like tar and dripping from his eyes like acid as Peter yelled at everything and nothing, 'Why do I have to feel this way?'

There was pain tightening like a vice around his heart and turning his joints to stone and curling his hands into shaking fists as Peter yelled, 'What did I do to deserve this? Haven't you taken enough from me?!'

There was pain, crying and crying and _crying_ _and echoing so desolately_ in the deepest facet of his soul as Peter howled into the depths of the void, 'WHY ME?!'

His voice echoed like an army, like thunder rolling across the plains, like a fire roaring savagely through an empty and dry forest. His voice echoed but faded to a whisper, until all that was left was the silence and the pleadings of a single voice.

 _Why me?_ begged the voice.

_Why me?_

_Why—_

_—why—_

_—why—_

_—me?_

##  **HELL WILL ALWAYS COME BEFORE YOU GROW.**

This wasn't Hell – this was purgatory. Peter was stuck halfway, too far from moving on and too far from going back. He was a thread amongst a million others, a thread who so happened to tear the other strings apart without himself snapping. He was the source of all this pain his friends and family had to suffer through. They all paid the price for the damage Peter caused.

No, not Peter.

Spider-Man. _Spider-Man._

It was...it was an obsession, an addiction, that Peter fell onto when he couldn't be enough. It was a crutch for when he was weak. When Peter couldn't fit the mould, Spider-Man was there to fill the gaps. When Peter Parker failed, Spider-Man would take his place.

##  **TROUBLE FOUND ME.**

And when Spider-Man failed...everyone else would suffer.

Why should Peter even exist if Spider-Man was the only one people could see? Every choice, every action, seemed to tighten the noose around his loved ones, pulled them closer into the crossfire. Why did everything Spider-Man do have to drag itself back to him?

 _But you_ _are_ _Spider-Man,_ some distant part of Peter's mind said.

No, he wasn't. Spider-Man was powerful, he was heroic, he was a figure in the superhuman community. He was someone people looked up to. Peter was none of those things; he was a person who turned up at the wrong place at the wrong time. He was just a kid bitten by a spider.

 _Keep telling yourself that,_ the voice mumbled back.

Doubt settled like lead over Peter.

##  **TROUBLE FOUND ME.**

_What did that mean?_ he wanted to ask.

The answer was a ripple, a small notion that built and built and built and coalesced into a wave made from a single thought. It slammed into Peter, sending him hurtling through the void, sending him sputtering and coughing and shoving him _awake._

Because, he figured a second later, maybe Spider-Man had always been a part of Peter. They were intertwined; he could choose to be selfish about this, he could own that fact. That Spider-Man and Peter Parker have always been the two sides of the same coin, have always glittered different colours despite being a part of the same crystal. The heroism and power being parts that had always existed in Peter, parts of him that had been given a name and a symbol. Given a form, given a purpose. Given a _life_ to.

 _You're Spider-Man, Peter Parker,_ came that voice again, slow and resolute.

_You're Spider-Man. Act like it._

##  **I'M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

There was light when Peter woke up in the back seat of a car. The rumbling of engine hummed through the seat he was lying on, vibrating his atoms. His head propped up weirdly while his body lay limp and unresponsive in front of him, something heavy resting on his abdomen. The constricting warmth of his jacket was gone, and a quick look showed the dark material, bloody and dry, bundled up by his feet.

Peter's arms were pinned to his sides, maybe underneath him; no matter where they were, the reality of the situation came back swiftly and quietly. He wasn't even surprised that he'd ended up in the backseat of a police car.

Voices drifted in and out, steadily growing louder and clearer in his ears. The fuzzy shapes in Peter's vision sharpened, colours became vibrant. His Spider-Sense rippled quietly, not quite on edge in panic but pulsing with anticipation, curiosity.

Peter tilted his head, and a wave of nausea smothered him as the car suddenly veered to the right, tires squealing along the tarmac. He bit his lip and held back his gag as he glanced at the driver of the car.

It...wasn't a police officer. It was a man, late twenties, maybe, the dead giveaway of him not holding a position in the police force being the dark brown suit he wore. His hair was greasy and blonde and he had a pudgy face and a mouth that spat out words faster that even Peter couldn't comprehend. He was gesturing wildly to the person next to him, who Peter realised was a woman with long hair that glittered like copper, but he couldn't make out anymore details aside from that.

Slowly, Peter tried to sit up right when a hand suddenly pulled him down again.

##  **ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOOR.**

Peter coughed in surprised, then heard someone mutter, right above his head, 'Hey, Parker, glad you're awake. Take it easy, we're getting you somewhere safe.'

'Wha—?' Peter squirmed beneath the hand, finding that he was pulled up against someone's side with their arm wrapped around his chest; the person's gloved hand was pressed tight against the now-hastily bandaged bullet wound in Peter's shoulder, the sleeve of his shirt torn off, the hand keeping the wound relatively closed as they drove recklessly through the city.

Peter tried again, rasping, 'Who...who are you? Where are we going?'

'You mean you don't recognise me?' the voice by his head asked in mock disbelief, trying to draw Peter's attention. 'Come on, Spidey, we've met on different occasions. You're always talking, and I've threatened to knock you out.'

Peter thought hard; surely it was someone he knew, because if it wasn't his Spider-Sense would have been on alert. Here it was...almost relaxed.

Trusting his senses, Peter cocked his head at an angle, gazing up at the man who held him. He had a stubble, his jaw streaked with dirt, and there was the smell of garbage about him. His messy red hair glinted like rusty bronze, and he had eyes that glittered between green and hazel; they were glazed over and empty, as if the man wasn't entirely focusing on Peter.

Peter had never seen this man's face before, but the Kevlar-like suit Peter was leaning on stirred distant memories. The suit the man wore was scarlet and stiff, lined with crystalline rubies of dried blood and grime. Peter glanced at the object resting on his stomach, his eyes tracing over the form of a helmet, designed to slide over the head with a pair of horns curling out of the front.

It clicked a moment later, and Peter sighed with a relieved and loud, 'Double D?'

##  **ANOTHER HIGH, ANOTHER LOW.**

Daredevil smiled at Peter, nodding in affirmation. 'How are you doing?'

'Like crap, thanks,' Peter replied, chuckling drily. 'Did you...uh, did you really throw me into the garbage?'

'What?' yelped the woman in the front, glaring at Daredevil. 'You did _what?'_

Shrugging sheepishly, Daredevil just stared emptily into the air, but Peter could pick up on the mirth that settled behind his unseeing eyes. 'Well, the police were much keener on chasing vigilantes than investigating teenagers trussed up in the garbage.'

Peter sighed in a half-hearted agreement, relaxing against Daredevil. He gestured to the two people at the front of the car with a tilt of his head and asked, 'Are...are they your friends?' because there had never been an instance where Daredevil had taken a cab home.

Hesitating, Daredevil shrugged. 'They are...associates of mine, yes.'

Before Peter could question him further, there was a vicious horn sounding in the streets. The driver of the car just as viciously swore at the offender, overtaking them and speeding down the road. Grunting, the driver demanded, 'Hey, is the kid awake? I can't help but hear the conspiratorial whispers in the back.'

'He's awake,' Daredevil replied, and Peter glanced at the woman who quickly turned in her seat to face him. Her bright blue eyes sparkled with curiosity, analysing Peter. A look of pity and sympathy flashed across her face, and Peter couldn't help but turn away after muttering a brief _Hello_ to her.

'Where are we going?' Peter asked again, wincing as the car jostled slightly.

'To my apartment.' Daredevil shifted in his seat, readjusting Peter's position as he suddenly asked, 'I suppose you won't mind if we tell you who we are, right?'

'What?' Peter tried glancing up at Daredevil. 'No, you don't have to—'

'It's only fair,' the lady piped up, smiling a tight and sad smile. 'Your identity is out in the open without your consent. We can give you our names willingly.'

Before Peter could say anything, the man in the driver's seat said, 'Oh, let me do the honours. My name's Foggy Nelson. This lovely woman over here is Karen Page—' He slipped one hand off the steering wheel in favour of waving it towards the lady, Karen '—and that suicidal jolly man who's holding you is Matt Murdock.'

'Jolly man?' Peter questioned; his bemused look caused Karen to snicker and for Daredevil – Matt – to grumble in dismay. His disgruntled expression elicited a giggle from Peter, but it quickly drew on his energy and he slumped against the seasoned and older vigilante.

'Matt Murdock,' Peter said after a moment. 'It's gonna take some time to get used to that...'

Matt just huffed. 'Believe it or not, I was appointed as your lawyer – defence attorney, if you will – only a few days ago. Mrs. Stark seemed quite desperate these days.'

Peter blinked. 'You're...my lawyer?'

Foggy, from the driver seat, smacked his hand against the wheel. His blonde hair flicked around from the action. 'Nelson, Murdock and Page at your service,' he said, his voice light but coming out flat from between gritted teeth. 'Wouldn't be the first time dealing with a supposed vigilante murderer, however. We're perfect for the job.'

'We are?' asked Matt, almost disbelievingly.

'No, of course not, Matt, I was being sarcastic,' Foggy replied back snappishly, taking another left and speeding down the road.

'Well, to be fair, we would have been the law firm defending you if the police weren't chasing you,' Karen said kindly, reaching out to tap Peter's hand.

Biting his lip, Peter asked, 'Are the police after us?'

Matt fell silent, cocking his head to the side like a bird of prey, listening to something beyond their small bubble. 'They are a few blocks away,' he finally said, his answer ambiguous and allowing horrible scenarios to fill Peter's head.

'Do they know I'm in this car?' asked Peter.

'Highly unlikely.'

'But you could get caught.'

The silence that followed was thick and heavy. Peter wished it had gone back to the panicked chatter a few moments ago, but even the possibility of being pulled to the side of the road, especially with a wanted individual on the run...there weren't many positive outcomes stemming from that.

##  **ROCK BOTTOM—**

The next few minutes passed in tense silence. Peter's vision occasionally warped, but he deduced it to be from the blood loss and the aching tiredness flooding his body. For the first time in days, where his senses would have been pulled taut with anxiety and alertness, he felt relaxed enough to close his eyes without the fear of being yanked away.

It had been a long time since he had felt remotely safe. Of course, being driven to his vigilante-friend-turned-lawyer's home whilst bleeding was nowhere near safe, but comparatively this was something Peter would have begged for only a day ago.

Quietly, Foggy drove the car through multiple neighbourhoods, always glancing fearfully into his rear-view mirror. The way his eyebrows creased sent shivers up Peter's spine, as if the authorities were right behind him, but his senses never spoke up, and Foggy never said anything.

A moment later, the car pulled up against the curb. The engine sputtered to a stop almost immediately as Foggy yanked out the key, hurriedly gesturing for Karen to exit the car. It was a flurry of gestures and movements, and Peter suddenly found himself being dragged out of the car, Matt's arms around his chest and shoulders. The Daredevil helmet on Peter's abdomen rolled off his legs and disappeared into the shadows of the seats. Disorientation from the sudden change in position was only made worse as Peter was pulled onto his feet.

The chill of the wintry air was a shock against Peter's skin, because he had gotten used to the stale and warm air inside the car. It was like the wind was armed with knives, ready to claw at him and drag him to the ground as his knees buckled, but Peter's collapse was evaded with Matt and Foggy's arms around his shoulders, holding him up.

Peter's legs were dead weight, shuffling uncooperatively, but somehow the other two men managed, directing him into a dark apartment building, Karen hurrying somewhere further ahead of them and out of sight. They reached a set of stairs, and, figuring Peter would take too much time in simply trying to lift a foot, Matt scooped him up in his arms and trudged up towards his apartment.

Head lolling to one side with every single one of Matt's light footsteps, Peter dimly watched as the stairs spiralled upward towards a reddish ceiling, seemingly forever. He wondered just how far Matt's apartment was when they made a sharp turn to the left and into an open doorway. The smell of dust was the first thing Peter noticed as they walked through a short hallway, then as they emerged into the joined living room and kitchen, the somewhat fuzzy shapes in Peter's vision began to sharpen as he focused on the items and furniture in Matt's apartment.

Gently, Matt lowered Peter onto a couch lined with blankets and cushions set in the centre of the room. A sigh of relief slipped past Peter's lips because frankly, pulled into an unusual position whilst drenched in blood for an undetermined amount of time was as uncomfortable as it could get.

Someone was speaking next to him. Peter focused his hearing, listening to Matt call out to Karen, somewhere in the depths of the apartment, about where the clean clothes were. There was the clatter of a light box being dumped onto a table, and the bandages around Peter's wounded shoulder unravelled.

'We're just going to get you cleaned up,' Matt said as he rummaged through the box and handed Foggy a pack of alcohol wipes. 'Just patch up any wounds and cuts. Can't be comfortable sitting like that, right?'

Peter only made a sound of agreement as Foggy struggled to slip Peter's shirt off without aggravating the wound in his shoulder.

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM—**

An agonising half hour later, Peter sat upright on the couch, dressed in Matt's spare oversized clothes, just inches away from tearing off the bandages wrapped around every centimetre of his skin to scratch at the irritated cuts along his body. Most of the cuts were well on their way to healing, albeit a lot slower than normal from the lack of food and the otherworldly amounts of stress weighing on him. Peter's shoulder wasn't faring as well as anyone would have liked; the bullet had partially shorn through his brachial artery before it had sliced clean through his shoulder, and had Peter been a regular person he would have died the moment he was hit by that car in the middle of the street.

But Peter wasn't a regular person. He was Spider-Man.

He groaned as he fell back into the couch. 'This honestly cannot get any worse,' he grumbled, uncaring of how he sounded so whiny and so self-absorbed. 'I don't understand why it just had to...spiral like this.'

Across from him, on the other couch, sat Matt and Karen, their hands folded across their laps; Matt had changed out of his Daredevil suit, now dressed in a simple T-shirt and jeans. Foggy was rummaging through the drawers in the kitchen, trying to pull together something for them to eat.

'You know,' Peter said, 'it wasn't serious when I was first outed. There was a whole month where nobody even _cared_ that Spider-Man literally went to the school just a few neighbourhoods from here. And then...then the whole Mysterio cult began.'

It was small, at first, like most things. A flutter of green paper, a glance at an armoured figure, the whispers of a dead hero. They weren't bad, they were just rumours, lies sprouting like flowers in a graveyard.

It was only a matter of time before those flowers withered, leaving behind gnarled roots and twisted thorns that shoved Peter under a limelight, as if he were a sorceror tampering with dark magic and was now bound to a stake with a fire roaring beneath him. Gnarled roots turned into accusatory fingers and twisted thorns became barbed words, and suddenly the world had turned its unrelenting and merciless and inescapable gaze on him.

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM.**

'They're all after me,' Peter said dismally, staring at his hands.

Matt tilted his head, still gazing blankly at the coffee table between them, and, with thoughts swirling behind his eyes in a disconcerting mess, Peter wondered if the man could actually _see_ him – Matt was always focusing on something beyond him, never quite here. But maybe he always had been, he just never made an effort to stand out.

'You're afraid,' Matt remarked after a moment.

Peter's gut twisted at the nonchalance of such a statement. 'Afraid? _Afraid?_ Double D, I'm honest-to-God _terrified.'_ Fingers fumbling over themselves, Peter fidgeted in his seat. _'None_ of this was ever supposed to happen. No one was supposed to know my name or my face, but now they do, _everyone_ knows. They know who I am, they know who my family are, my friends—'

Panic wormed its way through Peter's heart, gnawing on it until worry bled out in steaming rivulets, thick and sticky. His Spider-Sense quivered and crackled outward, bleeding fingers that scraped along brick and mortar. It made Peter want to gag, to do something other than...than...than _sit_ here, idly waiting for whatever to happen to slither back into his life. Waiting forsomething horrible happen, and _letting_ it unfold.

Peter wanted to do something, he wanted to lift the world and drag it back to where it used to be, but like most things, he wasn't sure how do to it, how to change things that had fractured so violently. He wanted to tie it all back together with webs, with Spider-Man, but he didn't know how to do it. He was Peter Parker, he was seventeen, and he was still a kid, and he _didn't know what to do._

A hand on his own. Peter flinched back to reality, eyeing Foggy as the man pushed a small platter with a sandwich on it into Peter's hands. 'Eat up, kid,' Foggy insisted. 'Don't care what kind of super-healing you might have, but that blood loss'll sure make you hungry.'

Peter wasn't sure that was exactly how recovering from near death from blood loss worked, but he took the platter from Foggy without a word. Hunger clawed incessantly deep in his stomach; to think that he was here simply because he wanted to buy a sandwich from Delmar's. Life really did move on quickly.

As Peter hungrily bit into his sandwich, Matt groped around the coffee table. Karen swiftly bent forward and scooped up a pair of red-tinted glasses from the table, slipping them into Matt's hand. Satisfied, Matt slid them on his face, and only then did Peter recognise the fact that the glasses weren't meant to help Matt see any better.

'Your family,' Matt started, his voice already slipping into the analytical and smooth tone of a lawyer, 'is under the safety and protection of Mrs. Stark. I, myself, saw to that. Your...aunt – was it? – your aunt is safe, she and along with any of your belongings have been transferred over to the New Avengers Compound for the time being. Your friends haven't been granted that luxury, but Mrs. Stark has requested for personal guards to monitor them should...any unprecedented scenarios unfold.'

'But is it enough?' Peter asked, easily picking up the subtext. 'Is having a few guards enough to stop people who are angry and out for revenge from hurting my friends and family?' He chuckled drily; he sounded so much older than he felt, he sounded so tired than the youthfulness of his age. So, so tired.

Peter continued, 'I've met...so many different people, and about eighty-two percent of them have all wanted to bash my face in. Thieves, crime families, costumed bad guys...I don't think anything'll be enough to stop all of them.'

Pursing her lips, Karen held out her pale hands in a suggestive manner. 'We are defending you,' she reminded him. 'That gives us a few options. We could defend you and say that you've been wrongly accused and that you really aren't Spider-Man, or we could reduce any charges and sentences piled up against you.'

'That's...' Peter blinked, emotions sputtering like a broken clock inside him. 'That's— that's really nice of you, thank you.'

'No worries,' piped up Foggy. 'We knew what we were dealing with when we signed on for the case. How bad could this get?'

##  **I'M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

Peter's Spider-Sense flashed outward like knives, sharp and alert. It hissed and spat, and it pulled Peter to his feet as if he were a puppet yanked by unrelenting strings. The platter with his unfinished sandwich clattered to the ground in a deafening _CLANG._

'Something's coming,' he breathed, his eyes wide as he turned towards the large tinted windows of Matt's apartment. Outside, the primary billboard of Hell's Kitchen glitched and warped with silent advertisements.

Matt seemed to have picked up on his distress, jumping to his feet and striding towards the windows as if he were about to stick his head outside. 'Metal harness,' he said, listening to something Peter couldn't hear. 'It's large...swinging, like a pendulum. There's...two heartbeats, two men. And—'

##  **ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DOOR.**

Suddenly his Spider-Sense _shrieked,_ clawing with intensity of the sun and Peter was leaping over the coffee table, grabbing Foggy and Karen and throwing them to the ground just as the window shattered. Matt had barely ducked out of the way as a large hunting knife shattered the glass into glitter and streaked through the air, sinking into the ground where Peter would have been impaled through the heart had he not moved a second earlier.

Peter stared at the knife, his Spider-Sense glowing red-hot in warning and anticipation. Designs were etched into the blade and the leather-bound handle, glinting with a sadistic light. He hadn't seen this particular knife before, but the intricate Russian inscriptions he had.

Another window exploded, another blade striking the ground right by Peter's feet, another few inches and he would have been pinned to the wooden floor like a butterfly to a board.

Matt was yelling, but words turned to incomprehensible sounds as Peter ignored him, ignored the shrieking of his Spider-Sense as he tried to drag the two other non-vigilante individuals into a different room. He tried to ignore the way he heard Matt's body drop to the ground as something heavy loomed over him, he tried to ignore his Spider-Sense's echoing bellow as something large and metallic wrapped around his waist and threw him across the apartment.

Pain seared like fire along Peter's back as he slid down the cracked and jagged brick walls. His breath came out in broken wheezes as whatever was around his middle tightened its grasp on him. This was new; Peter hadn't met anyone with metallic limbs before.

Then came the voice.

##  **ANOTHER HIGH, ANOTHER LOW.**

_'Spider-Man,'_ a man called into the Murdock apartment. His smile cut through the din and chaos of the space like a knife, like a blade levelled at Peter. He was outfitted with a green and grey metallic harness, just as Matt had said. Peter's eyes trailed along the metal twisted around his waist back towards the man, at the telescopic metal limb, broken into segments that stretched from the man's back and held Peter in a bone-crushing grip.

A glance at the man's scarred face and the scorpion tattoo on his neck had Peter's insides churning. With a surprised rasp, Peter said, 'Mac Gargan?'

Gargan's face twisted, anger blazing in his bloodshot eyes. 'You seem so surprised,' he snarked, venom lacing his voice. 'I don't _care_ that you know who I am. All that matters is that _I_ know _you,_ and I can maul your face now that I know your name, _Parker.'_

The metal lining over Gargan's harness rippled like nanotech, minute components shuffling their positions to rearrange themselves. Peter could feel something sharp press into his back, right over his spine, like a threat made material, like a scorpion's stinger ready to break through skin and flesh.

##  **ROCK BOTTOM—**

Peter squirmed within the coils of metal. 'I'm flattered,' he huffed, trying to pry the segmented metal off with bandaged and bloody fingers, 'that you know who I am. Never had a fan club before. It's probably fun, if I wasn't held at stinger-point, Gargan.'

Gargan snarled, and the flare of his Spider-Sense had Peter tensing. Before Gargan could strike, a hand on his shoulder stopped him. From behind the Scorpion, stepping out from the window as if he had climbed the apartment walls himself was Kraven.

Now Kraven was a familiar face, with his trimmed moustache and muscular build and ugly animal-themed suit; the moment the Mysterio cult had dug its claws firmly into society, Kraven crept out of the shadows as silent as panther, nothing but the thrill of the hunt singing in his mind. He'd even gone as far as to side with the police to capture Peter, simply to nail the Spider-Man mask to the wall like a trophy.

'Kraven, buddy,' Peter greeted with terror in his heart. 'You and the scorpion over here teaming up? Oh, how _low_ you've stooped to recruit stupid arachnids to help you catch me.'

'Who're you calling—?' Gargan demanded, his command over his mechanical scorpion tail sending jolts of pain slicing up Peter's body as the tail suddenly constricted, viciously rubbing healing scars raw and fresh again under the bandages. His Spider-Sense flailed like it was drowning, its jaws ripped open in a deafening howl.

Kraven strode into the apartment as if he had all the time in the world. He retrieved the knives that had been embedded deep into the floor, pulling them out with ease before slipping them into the numerous sheaths on his hip. He eyed Peter, his dark eyes glittering calculatingly, a hunter watching his prey.

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM—**

'You take this as a joke, _malen'kiy pauk_ ,' said Kraven, his Russian accent as thick as tar. 'If you are so optimistic about this predicament of yours, then we shall be as well.'

Peter wanted to snap at him, hurl barbed words at him, but then he heard a softly spoken, 'Peter.'

His eyes flicked downward. Peter saw Matt lying on the ground, his glasses cracked and askew on his face. Blood dribbled from his nose, and his eyes, those glazed green eyes of his, had locked with Peter's own, something akin to terror and fear burning within them. He was pinned underneath Gargan's metal-clad boot, its tip smeared with red.

'Peter,' Matt said again, his voice unwavering and calm, 'don't antagonise them.' He paused. 'They're a little full of themselves. Villains always are.'

Daredevil never joked. Daredevil only swung and punched and left the bad guys tired and aching on the streets. If he was joking, then something horrible loomed on the horizon.

'I wouldn't call myself a villain, friend,' Kraven said amiably, flourishing his hands. 'I am but a man empowered by the chase that these wanted criminals like _him_ —' Kraven pointed at Peter '—provide me.'

Matt ignored him, his attention still focused on Peter. 'Maybe...' Matt licked at the blood dripping into his mouth, spitting it back out again. 'Maybe provide constructive criticism for them, eh?'

Gargan roared. The mechanical tail around Peter's waist snapped backwards, releasing him. Peter dropped to the ground, heaved in a breath and watched as the tail shifted and folded downward, its scorpion-like stinger poised just inches from Matt's face, Gargan screaming at Matt, 'I'm going to _beat_ _you to_ _death,_ you little—!'

##  **—ROCK BOTTOM.**

And suddenly Peter was running, his Spider-Sense roaring and his blood boiling and his voice thundering like a storm. He shoved himself into Kraven, slamming his fist into the man's face, his nose _snapping_ under Peter's fingers.

Pain splattered up Peter's arm, but he didn't care, instead dodging Kraven's own blows and swerving away from the knives slashing out at him. He twisted, leaping forward and kicking Kraven away, Peter's momentum carrying him through the air and straight into Gargan, knocking the man off his feet.

The man growled, scorpion tail flashing, but Peter grabbed him by the harness and hurled him back deeper into the apartment. Gargan collided with Kraven, and the two went sprawling into the kitchen, knocking over glassware and porcelain.

'You people are _sick,'_ Peter growled at them as they crawled to their feet. 'You think it's fine to torment people simply because you want to? To take pain and turn it into this horrible game?'

Peter quickly bent down to help Matt to his feet, pushing him against the wall as a signal for him to move, to get away. Peter knew Matt wouldn't do such a thing, but Peter just wasn't having it. He was a kid, sure, but he was a superpowered one at that. And he was fed up with the world telling him he would never be able to fully use his potential.

'You stay the _hell_ away from my friends and family,' Peter snarled at Kraven and Gargan, raising his fists. 'You stay the hell away from the people and you stay away from _me_ and be on your merry way to jail before I put you in there myself.'

Kraven laughed, a deep chuckle that vibrated through Peter's very bones. 'Oh, _pauk,'_ he said, 'it is hard to turn away from a prey as curious as yours. It's your life that is in danger, not the people's. And yet, you insist on fighting for them.' He slipped out a hunting knife, twirling it between skilled fingers. 'It is _amusing.'_

'Amusing for a self-entitled brat,' Gargan chimed in, mechanical tail curling threateningly; its point glinted wickedly, metal whirring and hissing as Gargan smiled a bloodthirsty grin. 'It's going to be fun watching you bleed, Spidey.'

A hard-set determination leaked from Peter's skin like light. Everything was sharp to his senses, every detail in unparalleled clarity, his Spider-Sense coiled and quivering with anticipation. His blood sang with energy, and Peter wanted nothing more than to burn it. To burn it into a beacon, letting the world know that he was tired of being held back, of being hounded, of having his name – Peter Parker's name, Spider-Man's name – slandered and dragged through the crimes of others.

He wasn't something the world could crush under its foot. He had been sinking into the darkness for too long, and he wasn't sure what the world was going to do about it.

In the end, he didn't care, because this was _his life_ at stake. He could die a coward, submerged in doubt and delusions, or he could gather the last of his strength and prevail a hero, embracing the responsibility and strengths he had been endowed with.

He could die on his own terms.

'Come and get me,' Peter dared them.

And when Kraven brandished his knives in a sweeping arc, and when Gargan's mechanical tail swung outward every bit as relentless as the universe itself, it was Peter Parker and it was Spider-Man who raised their fist and greeted them with a raging fire in his heart.

##  **I'M GOING BACK TO MY ROOTS.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so first of all, I hope you enjoyed this. This was a kind of personal fic, this one. I really dug down and basically slapped a bunch of paint onto the canvas, blasted some music and used a mop to mix everything together.
> 
> And, secondly, the is the personal part: self-deprecation and self-doubt _fucking sucks_. It is the worst feeling, to think that you can never be enough no matter how hard you try. How everything you do turns to shit and there's basically this huge cavern that you're endlessly falling into. It is horrible. Couple that with mental, emotional, physical and societal issues, our own pasts, the events taking place all around the world? Absolutely devastating. It's just so goddamn heartbreaking.
> 
> So uh, to channel all of that anger and worthlessness out of me, I decided...make a fic. Make a Peter Parker fic, because ~~you're obsessed with him shut up lmao~~ he of all superheroes knows what it's like to be down in the dumps, to be down in hell. He still makes it out, and I admire that. He takes the things that made him weak and turns it to something that can help him, and I just...that's always been a part of his character. The underdog, the kid who can lift tonnes of debris off of him, the guy who somehow always knows what hell is like, and is always there to remind you that not everything is this all-consuming hopelessness.
> 
> Peter Parker helped me realise that. It's not an easy path, but, we're getting somewhere. We're getting somewhere. We'll get there, soon, I believe.
> 
> Lmao sorry for this explosive rant, couldn't figure out where to put this XD  
> Again, I hope you all enjoyed this tale as much as I have! Spider-Man: No Way Home has me pumped up and ready to go wild, and I can only hope that our boy can return to a (relatively) normal life again! I wish you all a wonderful day, stay cool, vibe to your favourite tunes ~~the possibility of me making another of these is never going to be zero~~ and be as happy as y'all can be. Love you, peeps!  
> ~Agni


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